Page 113 of Between the Lines

“Gripping,” he mutters. “All right.”

He shifts my laptop, and I look on as he reads, worrying my lower lip between my teeth.

I can’t take it for long. “Which one are you starting with?”

“Reading early life now,” he says. “This part is… interesting.”

“What part?”

“This part.” He moves the cursor over the third paragraph. Lingers over the sentence where I’ve written about how he attended great schools but didn’t necessarily enjoy his studies. That he is someone who sees merit in knowledge but only if there is a clear purpose to it.

“We’ve never spoken about this,” he says.

“Maybe not. But it’s true. Isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he mutters. He scrolls down, cursor resting over another sentence. “‘The family structure was ordinary only at surface level.’We haven’t spoken much about my family.”

“No, but I can’t leave them out, can I?” My voice doesn’t waver. It’s confident, calm, and I meet his gaze.

He doesn’t look away. “You’re forcing my hand.”

“If you won’t tell me anything,” I say, “I’m going to have to make things up. Form my narrative based on inferences, clues, and what I’ve gleaned from the media. The way everyone else has.”

“The way everyone loves to,” he mutters.

I pat the comforter between us. “That’s the thing, Hartman. This book will letyoucontrol the narrative for once.”

“It will invite strangers into my life. Into the part I don’t like thinking much about myself.”

He’s close, resting on his elbow. My hand flattens against the comforter. “It can be scary.”

“You’re using a therapy voice, Chaos. That’s what’s scary.”

I roll my eyes. “I’m trying to be supportive.”

“Mm-hmm.” His eyes glance back down again, at the screen. They linger there. “It’s well written,” he says. It’s almost begrudging, his praise. “I like your voice. This might work better as a biography than a memoir.”

“I’m good at my job,” I say, “just like you’re good at yours.”

“Clearly, considering you’ve gotten much further in this process than I ever planned to allow.”

I reach for a pillow and fluff it beneath my head. “Were youreallyplanning on just stringing the poor ghostwriter along for months and then nixing the entire project at the final stage?”

The curve of his lips is entirely unashamed.

“Aiden!”

“All is fair,” he says with a one-shouldered shrug. “I didn’t expect the ghostwriter to be an infuriatingly persistent, interesting, distractingly pretty woman I’d already met.”

“Distractingly pretty?”

He runs his free hand through his hair. “You know exactly how beautiful you are, Charlotte. And you wield it like a sword.”

It takes my brain a few moments to process it. Heat races up my neck and makes my chest too tight. He really does think I’m beautiful.

“That’s a compliment,” I whisper.

Him,with the body shaped like an athlete’s, and with a magnetism that draws everyone in a room to his side.

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